A reprographic system is one containing a scanner for scanning paper documents and pictures and storing them into electronic files, image processing software and/or hardware for storing, transmitting, and manipulating the files, and a printer for printing copies of the processed images. An example of a traditional, ‘closed’ reprographic system is a simple copier. In any such system, the scanner and printer must be calibrated periodically in order to achieve optimum image quality. Such calibration has traditionally been done manually inside the system. This manual calibration process must be performed by a technician with image science skills and the appropriate tools—making it inconvenient to alter calibrations for different applications.
Modern reprographic systems are moving toward a modular structure, often supporting multiple scanners and multiple printers in a defined architecture. Such systems can also include other output destinations for images, such as facsimile, e-mail, etc. In such a system, each component has its own unique image characteristics. Manual calibration of these individual components quickly becomes cumbersome. In addition, it is quite difficult to account for the translations of images between the various combinations of components that can occur in a system including several printers and scanners.